Opinion: How not to decide the future of the Boulder airport

For Thursday night the city council scheduled consideration of this motion regarding legal action about the future of the airport: “Motion to authorize the city attorney to initiate and pursue litigation against the United States of America, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Michael G. Whitaker in his official capacity as Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, to obtain a judicial determination of the duration of the city’s obligation to continue operating the Boulder Municipal Airport.” Since I’m writing this prior to the council meeting, I cannot comment on the outcome, though I suspect it will be rubber-stamped.

When I saw this motion announced on Monday, I was baffled. First, the city attorney had already filed the lawsuit on Friday, July 26, almost two weeks ago, per the lawsuit’s signature page. And the city has asserted that the city attorney has the authority to file this on her own. So why is the council now, after the fact, claiming to be “authorizing the city attorney to initiate” this legal action? Second, the Motion’s even-handed language “to obtain a judicial determination of the duration of the city’s obligation to continue operating the Boulder Municipal Airport” is nothing like the strong language in the already-filed lawsuit, which asserts that the city has the unilateral right to close the airport when certain agreements with the FAA expire around 2042. Third, the Agenda item asserts that there has been no “Public Feedback.” But I pointed out these issues to the Council and staff early Monday afternoon, almost immediately after this became public. What is going on? 

Whether the city has the authority to close the airport will no doubt have to be litigated. So, I thought it would be worth my time to review some of the agreements with the FAA to see if they all had definitive expiration dates. The early ones did require the City to agree to operate for 20 years in exchange for funds provided. But the 1991 agreement does not appear to have a time limit, possibly reflecting changes in federal law that allegedly require continued operation. I could not find such assertions in the actual document, but they may be buried in the many attachments.

The city’s lawsuit reflects this uncertainty by arguing that the land bought pursuant to this agreement was only a “temporary construction easement” bought for a minimal amount, around $5,000. But based on the FAA’s communications to the city, the FAA seems very intent in asserting its authority to keep the airport in operation. We’ll see how the courts decide. This will no doubt cost us a lot of money, and I would not bet on the city beating the FAA.

There are some serious policy and financial concerns with trying to turn the airport into housing. The financial ones are pretty obvious: likely having to pay the FAA market value for the land at the time the airport is closed (its market value is well over $100 million now, and will be way higher by 2042); having to run the airport for almost 20 years without any FAA funding (over $40 million); buying and constructing a new site for MedEvac helicopters; mitigating environmental issues (including those related to decades of leaded fuel use); etc.

Since the airport will continue to run for many years longer no matter what, how about converting to unleaded fuel ASAP? Irrespective of how all this plays out, that would be a significant environmental improvement that we all could applaud. Unfortunately, we won’t applaud the possibility that closing the airport could allow more noisy overflights from DIA, JeffCo, etc., because the current “safety bubble” will be gone.

Finally, what is the point of continuing to add more and more and more housing? I pointed out in my last column that increasing housing supply won’t cause prices to drop; demand is simply too great. (Note to council: Strengthening our currently inadequate affordable housing requirements and weak development impact fees would help way more.) 

Besides, our streets are rapidly degrading toward gridlock: In the last few days, I have seen northbound traffic backed up on Broadway from Arapahoe to University, so many people turning left from southbound Broadway onto eastbound Baseline that Broadway was blocked, and cars jamming U.S. 36 coming into town backed up almost all the way to Table Mesa. 

One-third of our water supply is threatened by the Colorado River drought. Our Open Space trails are overrun, and parking lots overfull. Why can’t we acknowledge that we already have more people than we can handle?

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